Flash Performance

The S602Z's lens has a pretty good range (although it is quoted at ISO
200). As you can see from the shots below white balance using the flash
seemed to be spot on although I did feel that the default flash metering
was a little underexposed. Luckily the S602Z offers flash exposure compensation
up to +0.6 EV so you can easily control the flash power output.

Night exposures

The S602Z allows for long exposures of up to 15 seconds in manual exposure
mode. Overall it performed relatively well, especially considering the
camera does not have a special dark frame subtraction noise reduction
system. There were a scattering of 'hot pixels' in longer exposures but
nothing too distracting or obvious (especially if you're going to reduce
the image size before publishing).

ISO 160, 8 sec, F4.5

ISO 160, 15 sec, F4.5

Barrel and Pincushion Distortion

As we'd experienced with the 4900Z and 6900Z the S602Z
suffers from both barrel distortion at wide angle and pincushion distortion
at telephoto. At both these extremes the distortion is more than we'd
like to see but isn't uncommon for a lens with such a long zoom range.

Barrel Distortion, 1.8% @ Wide Angle

Pincushion Distortion, 0.8% @ Full
Tele

Purple Fringing (Chromatic Aberrations)

As we noted with the 6900Z the S602Z does suffer from some
fringing, although these are limited to fairly extreme wide angle shots
and the fringing itself is more blue in colour and produced in combination
with blooming.

Visible fringing in this extreme wide
angle, high-contrast shot

Our now standard chromatic
aberration test shot

Overall Image Quality / Specific Issues

There's no doubt that the S602Z can produce some really
impressive images. There are lots of things to like about the images,
good colour, good dynamic range, nice tonal balance and relatively good
detail (considering the 3.1 million effective pixels the sensor is capturing).
Having said that I don't see a significant improvement in quality over
the 6900Z (at least not with some of the things we've previously noted
about SuperCCD images).

The S602Z's default output size of six megapixels is twice
the captured resolution, this will always lead to apprehension about the
ability of the camera to actually resolve the detail it's "claiming
to". Fujifilm don't like to use the word interpolation, but that
is in effect what is happening here. They would also argue that all digital
cameras interpolate (because of the GRGB Bayer pattern layout). The difference
here is that in the traditional square pixel layout CCD sense there is
at least one input 'photosite' to one output pixel. In the case of SuperCCD
each photosite accounts for at least two output pixels, clearly you just
can't make up that amount of resolution.

Examine 3 megapixel (2048 x 1536) images from the S602Z
and they're at least as good as the best three megapixel digital cameras
in the market. Unfortunately for Fujifilm the market has moved on from
that point. Prosumers at this level are looking for five megapixel cameras,
and they will undoubtedly be able to produce a more detailed image than
the S602Z (although at a slightly higher price). Fujifilm are clearly
very good at things like metering, white balance, colour processing, tonal
balance and maintaining dynamic range. It's a shame we can't see that
expertise put to practice on a traditional layout five megapixel sensor.

Orange Reds

In several of my test and "every day" shots colours which should
have been pure red came out looking very orange. This appeared to be caused
by too much green in what should have been a clean red. I found this could
be easily "fixed" with a reds selective colour -6 hue adjustment
in Photoshop (but this shouldn't be necessary). Lastly it also seemed
to be a little inconsistent, I also managed to take other shots where
the red was fine (no pattern to this).